Bloody, But Unbowed
by Cailin na hEireann
Summary: Sometimes, John forgets that Sherlock is dead.


**A/N One of these days, I should really get around to writing something longer than a one-shot. **

**As always, enjoy and review if you wish. All comments, good or bad, are accepted!**

_**London, England, day fifty seven.**_

John goes down to Mrs Hudson's flat every evening. She keeps it neat and tidy, and always, always warm. It's cosy and comfortable and everything John's flat _isn't_.

But then, John makes sure it isn't. It's his doing.

Of course it is.

He likes Mrs Hudson. He's liked her from the moment she opened the front door to him and Sherlock on that first evening. She's the sort of woman he's always liked, to be honest. She kind of reminds him of his mum, before she drowned herself in alcohol.

When he goes down to Mrs Hudson's flat, she's always waiting for him. Every evening, in the exact same spot. She always has tea ready, is always there with a blanket and the TV remote, is always happy to spend an hour watching mindless programmes with a man who can't stop trembling, even when it's not that cold.

It hurts his leg and his shoulder, but he makes it down the stairs every evening, for her. He knows she'll come looking for him if he doesn't. It's his way of saying to her: _see? I'm still here. I haven't slit my own throat or put a hole in my head, have I? _

He knocks on the door to her flat, hearing the telly already on in her living room. It's chilly, out here in the hallway. It doesn't take much to make John shiver these days.

The door opens, and she smiles at him. ''John, dear, how lovely to see you! Come in, come in!''

John comes in.

She sits him down forcefully on the sofa, as she does every night, and flitters away to get the tea. She returns quickly, bearing biscuits and chocolate roll and custard creams he knows he won't eat, and she knows too.

''So,'' she begins, settling down next to him and drawing the blanket over them both to ease John's shivering, even though it's not cold in her flat and she's probably overheated and_ God, why can't I stop shaking?_. ''How're things?''

This is her catchphrase these days. How are things? I know you're cold, but it's okay, you'll warm up soon and how are things? I heard that dreadful nightmare you had last night, John, sounded terrible, but how are things all the same?

He loves her for it, for pretending the answer might someday be different. It takes more courage than he thinks he has left.

''Oh,'' he smiles back, taking a sip from his cup to hide his chattering teeth. ''It's fine. Everything's fine.''

She has her catchphrase, he has his.

She smiles back for a moment, and it's sad, and helpless, and John thinks for a second that she knows how short a time he has left. One day, he just won't turn up for their evening sessions, and that'll be that.

Still, he's grateful she even bothers anymore. He doesn't.

''Good, dear. That's good.'' She sighs, and turns back to the telly screen. She doesn't say anything when John's shivering continues for so long that she has to put her arms around him to keep him warm, and he's grateful for that, too.

Sometimes, aside from their scheduled evenings, John goes to Mrs Hudson anyway.

He does this because sometimes, the flat still smells like Sherlock. Sometimes he enters the kitchen and he'll see a stain on the wall Sherlock scrubbed uselessly, half-arsed an effort as always. Sometimes John goes into the living room and sees the blurry mark of a handprint on the window, because Sherlock has, _had,_ a strange fixation with sitting in windowsills and staring outside, despite the numerous times John teased him that it made him look like a creeper.

Sometimes, John forgets that Sherlock is dead.

He'll come into his flat and smell Sherlock, that unmistakable scent of lavender and chemicals, and spend an oblivious minute looking around for him before he remembers.

He'll enter the kitchen and see the stain and turn to shout something abusive and colourful at his slob of a flatmate who can't even finish a job properly, and then remembers.

He'll come into the living room in the mornings and spot the handprint on the window and demand instantly that Sherlock set to work on cleaning it away, and then remembers and suddenly the print is the most precious thing in the world and John cannot look away from it for the whole day and when night falls and the temperature drops and condensation washes the handprint away, John cries and cries until he can no longer hear his own voice.

Mrs Hudson helps. She always does.

On those days, it's different from their TV sessions. She doesn't pretend to be happy, or cheerful. She doesn't bother asking how he's doing, how things are.

They sit curled on the sofa, under the cover of a blanket and talk about Sherlock until John can't stand it any more, and returns upstairs to his empty flat.

He still works at Sarah's clinic. She chats to him when they're on their breaks, but otherwise leaves him alone. She always has the heating turned up enough so that John's hands don't shake when he's examining patients.

On the way to work every morning, he passes a bus stop along the side of the street. He tries to avoid looking at it, but he invariably does. It's one of many places in the city he tries to avoid looking at now, because it has Sherlock's name scrawled all over it.

There are literally hundreds of them, all over the city. Indeed, the new craze has managed to spread all the way throughout the rest of the UK, even in some areas of the US.

It started off slowly, as a trickle. Random images began to pop up in John's email, posted to his blog or sent directly to him. He was shocked, at first. Why would people care so much to do something like this?

And then he realised: They're not doing it for him. Not really. Everything they're doing is a tribute to Sherlock Holmes, a last salute.

It begins to gain momentum after that, and it still hasn't slowed down.

Everywhere he looks, there are graffiti messages sprayed on the sides of public buildings. Posters carrying the same two words, the same name over and over again, are taped to community notice boards in schools, in hospitals, in shop windows.

He isn't quite sure what to make of them.

It makes his stomach turn sluggishly every time he sees Sherlock's face on these posters, and yet his heart leaps because some people still care, some people are determined to keep Sherlock Holmes' name still alive long after he's dead and gone. He almost wants to thank them, almost wants to join in.

_**London, England, day fifty nine.**_

This morning, on his way home from work, he notices something different.

There is an ad covering the side of one of the buses, as always, but it's not just an ad. It's not really an ad at all.

Bright, artful and alive, a close up of Sherlock's eyes. Beneath it, the words,

**Believe in Sherlock**

Someone has paid money for this message to appear on the side of the bus, in the hopes that many will see it.

John continues his journey to Baker Street in complete and utter silence, and, within two and a half hours, the entire country has gone mad.

John's email alert tings every few seconds. Another picture has been sent to him, and another, and another, until his blog, unused and on hiatus for so long now, has become the headquarters of this mania.

A London bus, driving through the city, with **BELIEVE IN SHERLOCK** displayed where its destination should be.

A photo of a schoolyard somewhere in Bristol, **I BELIEVE IN SHERLOCK HOLMES** scrawled messily with chalk all over the pavement.

A beach in Brighton, **MORIARTY WAS REAL** carved in huge letters into the sand.

Photos of people, so many people that John loses count, holding up signs with the words **BELIEVE IN SHERLOCK**, or DEDUCE THE **TRUTH**.

Over the next few days, the situation only escalates.

John, unsteady on his own feet and dazed, stumbles down to Trafalgar Square and sits on a bench with a cup of coffee. People pass him, chatting away into phones or hurriedly sipping their own lattes, almost like it's just another ordinary morning and they're going to work, except they're wearing shirts with **BELIEVE IN SHERLOCK** printed on them.

He sees his face cropping up soon, alongside Sherlock's.

**TEAM BAKER STREET**.

**I AM FIGHTING JOHN WATSON'S WAR**.

**MORIARTY WAS REAL**.

**DEDUCE THE TRUTH**.

**WE BELIEVE IN SHERLOCK HOLMES**.

**RICHARD BROOK DID NOT EXIST**.

He watches, dumbfounded, as more and more people wear navy blue scarves wrapped tightly around their necks. The big screen in Times Square beams** BELIEVE IN SHERLOCK HOLMES** for a full fifteen minutes, and everyone in the Square cheers when it comes on. The footage is shown on BBC news, and soon the international media is using words like 'phenomenon' and 'global craze' and 'history being made'.

A school in France has a Sherlock Day, and everyone, including the teachers, wears a** BELIEVE IN SHERLOCK** t-shirt and a deer stalker.

Someone sends him a video of a shopping centre in Belarus, where someone suddenly roars 'Vatican cameos' and half the shoppers drop immediately to the ground, even those who were not part of the plan but obviously knew what the words meant.

Sherlock Holmes has brought the world to its feet for one last standing ovation.

_**London, England, day seventy three.**_

And then there comes the day when John sees a proud, unapologetic message painted on one of St Bart's walls that says

**Sherlock is alive**

And so, calm and smiling and with pounding heart and hands that don't shake at all, John takes a graffiti can and sprays.

_**I am Sherlocked**_


End file.
